Speaker 1: 0:16

Hi, this is Omid Ashtari and Natasha McElhone. In this episode, we talk to Erling Kage, who is an explorer, author, publisher and art collector and the first person to have completed the Three Poles Challenge on foot the North Pole, the South Pole and the summit of Mount Everest. He has written eight books on exploration, philosophy and art collecting. They have been published in 42 languages. His new book is the North Pole the History of an Obsession, which is out later this year.

Speaker 3: 0:49

In this episode, we talk about searching for infinity in the North Pole.

Speaker 1: 0:54

The hardship of exploration.

Speaker 3: 0:57

And how inconvenience is actually good for you.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Wearing the same clothes for 50 days.

Speaker 3: 1:02

Confronting polar bears.

Speaker 1: 1:04

Pooping at minus 50.

Speaker 3: 1:06

How a single raisin can make your day.

Speaker 1: 1:09

Living underground in sewers.

Speaker 3: 1:11

And where the silence can be measured. But before we dive into all of this, I'm going to share an extract from Walking, one of Erling's already published books. Homo sapiens have always walked one of Erling's already published books. Homo sapiens have always walked, since the time they first made their way from East Africa over 70,000 years ago. Our species' history has been defined by bipedalism. Walking on two legs laid the foundation for everything we have become today. Our kind crossed over Arabia, continued on foot up towards the Himalayas, spread eastward throughout Asia, across the frozen Bering Strait, through the Americas or south towards Australia. Others walked west to Europe and finally all the way up to Norway.

Speaker 3: 1:59

These first peoples were able to travel long distances on foot, to hunt in new ways over larger areas and to gain new experiences and learn from them. Their brains developed more rapidly than those of any other living creatures. First we learned to walk, then we learned to make fire and to prepare food, and then we developed language. Human languages reflect the idea that life is one single long walk. In Sanskrit, one of the world's oldest languages originating from India, the past tense is designated as the word gata that which we have walked and the future is anagata that which we have not yet walked. The word gata is related linguistically to the Norwegian word gatt, meaning walked. In Sanskrit, the present is indicated by something as natural as that which is directly in front of us.

Speaker 3: 3:01

I have no idea how many walks I've been on. I've been on short walks. I've been on long walks. I've walked from villages and to cities. I've walked through the day and through the night, from lovers and to friends. I've walked in deep forests and over big mountains, across snow-covered plains and through urban jungles. I've walked bored and euphoric and I've tried to walk away from problems.

Speaker 3: 3:29

I've walked in pain and in happiness, but no matter where and why, I have walked and walked. I have walked to the ends of the world. Literally All my walks have been different, but looking back, I see one common denominator inner silence. Walking and silence belong together. Silence is as abstract as walking is concrete. Until now I've tried the obvious explanation, the one you turn to because it's quick and easy, and the opposite of the essence of walking, which is slowness. I explain that he who walks lives longer, the memory sharpens, the blood pressure falls, your immune system gets stronger. But each time I said it, I knew it was only half the truth it I knew it was only half the truth. To walk is something much larger than a list of advantages you can read in an ad for vitamins.

Speaker 3: 4:31

So what is the other half of this truth. Why do we walk, why do we walk from and what is our destination? We all have our answers. Even if you and I walk next to each other, we can experience the walk differently. After having put my shoes on and let my thoughts wander, I'm sure of one thing To put one foot in front of the other is one of the most important things we do. Let us walk important things we do.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Let us walk. Hello, this is Omid Ashtari.

Speaker 1: 5:13

And I'm Natasha McElhone, and with us today we have the wonderful Arling Kage. Thanks so much for being here, arling. Thank you, it's a pleasure. And today we're going to talk about exploration and many other things, but I wanted to anchor us by talking maybe a little bit about the fact that the well-trodden, cliche idea that we are all born explorers as children, because we navigate the world to figure out how to kind of get around, but at some point many of us give up and we land in a rut. So you kept going and you stayed an explorer. I'd love to hear about how you managed to stay curious and get out there.

Speaker 2: 5:47

Yeah, as you said, I think it's important to keep in mind that we're all born explorers. When you see a kid, as soon as you learn how to walk, you want to figure out what's between yourself and the horizon, and you walk towards the horizon and eventually beyond the horizon. This spirit is decreasing, but it never goes away. I think it never goes to zero. So, although you get a feeling that quite a few people have lost the spirit of exploration, they haven't, but it has been diluted for sure. And that's kind of the easiest thing in life, I think, to give up a lot of this spirit, which, again, I think is a mistake because, at least to me, life is very much about exploration in the sense of making life more difficult than it has to be.

Speaker 2: 6:34

I think that's very much the meaning of life, and this is not my idea. I mean, Plato wrote about the same, that the meaning of life is to fulfill your own potentials, and I think every wisdom that has lasted for more than 1,000 years you should take seriously. I like that. I think you know to a certain extent, like you know, happiness can really only be felt when you're going from some kind of misery into the opposite, If you're kind of in the opposite shape all the time, if you live a fairly good life, I think the quality of your happiness is going to be quite low.

Speaker 3: 7:10

Have you ever met Sylvia Earle? I have actually have you Tell me.

Speaker 2: 7:15

What a beautiful human being and a very fascinating explorer. I don't know her, but I've met her a few times, of course, kind of the first times I met her, I got a bit starstruck because I had read so much about her. She holds the record.

Speaker 3: 7:30

Many diving records. Yes, many diving. And she still does, she's 88.

Speaker 2: 7:34

Free diving, Not free diving maybe free, but mostly like scientific 381 meters or something I can't remember records but kind of you know her achievements as a scientist but also as someone who's talking about the oceans, showing photos from her expeditions and really influencing people's kind of relationship to nature and exposing the damage done to the coral reefs, and I think also she was voted Hero of the Earth.

Speaker 3: 8:04

That's a pretty cool title.

Speaker 2: 8:07

But what I really was fond of the first time I met her was her warmth, Like this kind of curiosity, respect for everyone around her, Although of course she was a superstar, so I think that also says quite a bit about her personality being just a deeply sympathetic person.

Speaker 3: 8:26

I heard her interviewed once as well, a long time ago. I can't even remember where it was now, but I got this sense that she had a calling, that it was this inexorable pull towards something that nothing could really get in the way of. And when I read your books and when I read about your preparation and your dreamscape and hinterland, where you imagined what the North Pole might look like or what the South Pole might look like, it seems similar. Many of us can read books about it when we're kids, or we can look at copies of Nat Geo, but it's someone else's life. You had the, I guess, confidence to think, no, actually that's, that's going to be my life.

Speaker 2: 9:12

I think if you have a lot of confidence, you know quite often you won't succeed in much. I think I think people I know who has been successful in exploration or in literature or in arts or in business, whatever, they have this kind of strange combination of insecurity but also strong confidence. But you're always kind of doubting yourself and doubting what you're doing and questioning yourself, but at the same time you have this kind of confidence that I'm going to try, I'm going to prepare as well as possible, I'm going to just not give up underway. I also think it's kind of a calling. It's a deeper thing.

Speaker 3: 9:57

That's what I mean. It doesn't feel like it's a thought process or an idea. It sits somewhere else. It's just something that is inevitable and is going to happen and you're going to do. It sits somewhere else, it's just something that is inevitable and it's going to happen and you're going to do it in your life, and she was going to do it in her life.

Speaker 1: 10:11

The term obsession was used earlier.

Speaker 2: 10:13

I think, that is probably the right, you need to be obsessed, and I think that's kind of you know it's underrated. I think being obsessed it's something like for many people something negative, but to me it's mostly very positive.

Speaker 3: 10:28

So forget equilibrium yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:32

I heard that business students at NYU and New York University. They was asked about their priorities in life and they all wanted to be top 1% earners. They want to live in the most beautiful homes and they want a balance in their lives. You can have it all, but you can't have it at the same time.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Yeah, I like that you already started going down the road, so why don't we actually get into your explorations? I'd love to talk about the North Pole. Tell us a little bit about your attempt with Berger-Absloh Berger yeah, Tell us about the details. I think it was 50, how many days? 55, 58? 58 days and nights and nights, yeah. So I think there is a new book that's going to come out about it as well.

Speaker 2: 11:21

Yeah, I'm just about now finishing a book that will be called the North Pole. I think its subtitle will be something like Nature, myth-making and Melting Ice I'm not sure. That's definitely the themes of the book, something you know. Deeply fascinating by the North Pole because, of course, it's at the top of the world, but it is an ocean, the fifth biggest ocean in the world covered by ice, and it has been ice for 2.7 million years, for around 75,000 generations, and we may be the first generation that will, you know, see the polar ocean with no ice, at least for a short period, like in the summer. So that's one of the reasons I sat down to write the book and also, of course, because Bergen and I had walked there, so I'm writing from a different perspective than others. It is a really difficult place to get to, which was a sweet spot for Bergen and me.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Yeah, we managed to get the foreword from your book and I remember one of the things that you said. There is like there are no thermometers around, but there was one in the plane and as you were landing, you're looking at it was minus 50 degrees or something like that. How does one even survive in minus 50? I can't even imagine it.

Speaker 2: 12:39

You know it's strange, you kind of get used to it. But of course when it's minus 52 degrees we couldn't heat the tent because we had very limited fuel. You're freezing, like you know. You almost start crying sometimes because it is so cold and you get exhausted because you ski all day and at the beginning it was kind of dark in the mornings and in the evenings. But what's interesting is that you get used to it. You eat the same food every day. It doesn't taste that good when you start, but after a few days and weeks it's starting to taste better and better. And it's dried meat, it's fat, it's oat, it's some chocolate, it's some bacon, it's some dried milk, it's some raisins and eventually it's the best food you ever tasted. And you know that's a great experience because we live lives at least for me who lives in Oslo super privileged lives and kind of hardly any worries when it comes to material matters. But it's interesting to see how short time it takes and before you actually used to live a really primitive life with very primitive means.

Speaker 3: 13:44

I think it was in another expedition and it was your solo expedition. But there's this beautiful passage in your book around peeling off a segment of tangerine, just one segment that you were allowed that day.

Speaker 2: 13:58

Yeah, exactly. And you know, one day or two I was so hungry and I lost a few raisins into the snow, into the ice, towards the North Pole, and let's say it was about minus 40 degrees. I was cold and I saw those three or four raisins laying on the snow or the ice and I just went down on my knees and just licked it up with my tongue and the taste was beautiful. But of course, course, at home I would just, you know, I wouldn't bother.

Speaker 3: 14:27

But you know it's this kind of memories is something no one can take away from you there's a beautiful quote despite how much you've traveled and as everyone probably knows who's familiar with your writing that you've traveled at least 100 different countries and they've all surprised you.

Speaker 2: 14:41

But you said I've only experienced one place that is unlike anywhere else the north pole, because when I finally got there I realized there was no there exactly, and that's you know that, although I knew, you know, I uh, as opposite to the great explorers from the 19th century and the early 20th century, when they went northwards they didn't know anything about what was going to meet them. I kind of knew, but still it was surprising to eventually get to the North Pole. It's nothing there. It's just drifting ice, maybe an open lead, and when you're at the North Pole one day, next day, you have been drifting 10 or 20 kilometers away. So it's nothing there.

Speaker 3: 15:29

But why did you think there was going to be something there? I mean, isn't that in our imaginations as kids? When we think about even Santa Claus or any of the sort of mythology around the North Pole, it feels like it's round and endless and infinite. What were you expecting to find?

Speaker 2: 15:43

I didn't expect to find anything particular, because I kind of knew. But still it was strange because exploration has traditionally been about taking something back home, usually something valuable. Like people went on exploration to build wealth. Obviously I didn't do it for that reason, but even Scott and Emerson brought some rocks back from the South Pole, while the North Pole it's actually nothing. It's as it says in Winnie the Pooh, it's just a place you explore, it's nothing else. But I like that. But it felt strange despite that. I knew it in advance.

Speaker 1: 16:21

You're always operating at a calorie deficit, by the way.

Speaker 2: 16:23

right, yeah, you are throughout mostly because you must be burning a lot more than so we ate about 6 000 calories per day, but you burn off a few.

Speaker 2: 16:33

You know a couple more thousands yeah, yeah well, I remember I saw my partner berger when we got to north pole hit. We had had the same underwear on for 58 days and nights. I didn't take it off once and he lifted on his shirt and I saw, like you know, there was absolutely no fat left and also a lot of muscles had been burnt off. And I was just laughing. And then I did the same on myself and of course I was just as thin. So it's not healthy.

Speaker 3: 17:02

You know it's okay every now and then Just to get gruesome for a moment, and please be as transparent as you feel comfortable being. What happens when you haven't taken your clothes off for 58 days and then you do what lurks beneath uh?

Speaker 2: 17:17

it's. You know, I like it, I enjoy it. I think you know we, we, we shower and wash ourselves too often, although when I'm in Oslo and go to work I take a shower in the morning just to be polite. But what's interesting towards the North Pole is there's no bacteria on the Arctic, on the polar ocean, so the only shit you have kind of is the shit you bring with you so you don't get sick and it's super cold so you don't smell the sweat either. And you have so many other worries towards the pole that you get a bit dirty is the least problem you have.

Speaker 3: 17:55

But how do you poo? Yeah, how do you go to the?

Speaker 2: 17:57

bathroom. You do it just like home you take your pants down on your legs and you go down in a hockey position, but just much, much faster.

Speaker 1: 18:07

Do you?

Speaker 2: 18:07

get frostburn or something. If you like to have a detail, I mean you can cut it off to the podcast if you don't want it. The trick is you need to shave your arse before you leave, because then it's kind of the hygiene is. Just use, like you know, tiny bit of toilet paper and then you're finished.

Speaker 3: 18:26

But does your butt not freeze?

Speaker 2: 18:29

the hygiene is just use, like you know, tiny bit of toilet paper and then you're finished because yeah, but does your butt not freeze?

Speaker 3: 18:34

It freezes. Oh yeah, it's everything freezes.

Speaker 2: 18:37

It's just hard to kind of describe how cold it is to have a shit when it's minus 50 degrees.

Speaker 3: 18:40

That's what I mean. So do you stave it off, Do you find? Did you get constipated for days on end and then just like save it up for the fourth day?

Speaker 2: 18:47

No, no, no, you need to put everything into routines and because there's so many decisions to make during one day, so you fix in advance how many hours I'm going to walk and when are we going to have the breaks, like you have a break of two hours, 10 minutes break, and then you kind of start exactly after 10 minutes. So discipline is super important. And that also comes to pooing. So you poo same time every day, because then you only do it once and it's very practical and I live off the same regime still. So it kind of you know just your body get accustomed to, like all these kind of routines, yeah, gotcha.

Speaker 1: 19:25

And what goes through your mind while you're on this walk? Because I think that you probably require a lot of resources to just be the automaton that goes through the routine, right, but what is going through your mind as you're doing it?

Speaker 2: 19:42

You know, it's a very simple life, uh, which you can sometimes be missing in civilization. The most important is, of course, you have to get up at the right time every day and then you eat breakfast. But at the same time as you prepare and eat breakfast, you're doing something else. At the same time. You always try to save time and then you start to ski around the same time every day and then you know what you have. The most important thing is to put one leg in front of the other and do it most, as effective as possible. So sometimes you hardly think at all.

Speaker 2: 20:18

Yeah, it's a meditation. Yeah, so you kind of almost like you hypnotize, health hypnotize. Actually, later in I learned properly how to hypnotize myself and other people. I had this friend psychologist called Nick Bayliss and he said to me I think you should learn how to hypnotize yourself properly because you have been hypnotizing yourself throughout your whole life. And I did, and he was right. So you're kind of in a trance, you're not disturbed. It's like you know. You put one leg in front of the other, you try to navigate through the ice, you try to support your partner if he has any problems and he supports you when he's the weakest, you kind of try to help, and when you feel the weakest, he tries to help you. It's kind of a beautiful life and you go to sleep at the same time every evening. Sometimes it's too cold, so you kind of wake up at night.

Speaker 1: 21:10

It's brutal, it's painful would you share a sleeping bag, or is it?

Speaker 2: 21:14

yeah, we share sleeping bag for the first 30 nights, but then had individual sleeping bags inside it. But of course, like you know, we didn't have anything in common but this ultimate dream about reaching the north pole. But when you sleep in the same sleeping bag for that long, you know you become very unfriendly, or you know great friends, so we're still great friends in terms of the quest.

Speaker 3: 21:39

I guess there's many levels and I'm sure also it means different things to you at different times in your life. And you're ruminating now because you're revisiting the trip and writing this book. Something you talk about in quite a few of your books is not that you can control the passage of time, but somehow that there's something about walking or moving that slows things down, and that you quoted once I don't know if it was you or you, it was a philosopher that you loved moving your body at the same speed as your soul, so not being in a plane or a car but using your own legs, so that a shared experience between mind, spirit, body, something like that. And I was thinking, is there some desire in you to? And also you wrote a book called Silence, which I'm sure was informed by these expeditions, I think you said noise and everything else can be measured, but silence can't. There's this kind of existential quest for silence, the infinite.

Speaker 2: 22:43

Yeah, exactly kind of the timeless infinite. But to what you said about your soul and the speed you're moving, I think it's a very important point that today people are moving so fast so your soul, your mind is not able to travel at the same speed.

Speaker 3: 23:02

What I'm hearing is the less you do, the more time you have.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Yeah, but also the opposite somehow.

Speaker 1: 23:10

I feel a road trip of Route 101 in California down the coast, if it's with intention, can just be as rich as I'd say, probably a walk or something. When people don't do things with intention, they just see the journey as a means to get to a destination, rather than actually experiencing the journey. And every journey is to be experienced.

Speaker 3: 23:32

But there's also and I know you've quoted her before Emily Dickinson, who is famously agoraphobic and actually didn't really move from a room for a very, very long time in her life. I mean 20, 30 years. You know her, poetry is as if she's traveled the world, because she said the width of the landscape, of Something like your mind or brain is wider than the sky. That's right, exactly.

Speaker 2: 23:56

And it's the end of a poem, and of course it's just a beautiful end of a poem and I'm also fascinated. I mean, everybody should read both. A little bit about her, but also, you know, of course, her poetry.

Speaker 3: 24:08

But she's not the only one. There were lots of people who were locked in rooms hundreds of years ago, writing as if they'd travelled the world.

Speaker 2: 24:16

Absolutely. And you know, a philosopher like Immanuel Kant wrote about the whole world and he never left Königsberg. So Arne Hardt left his home just once a day. But today it's common to have this idea that you can explore yourself and the world by looking into a screen, and I think that's a big mistake. We're kind of the first generation who's actually not doing something physical when we're exploring. I remember when my kids were younger we watched this movie called Wall-E. Remember the movie? Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful.

Speaker 2: 24:47

So that's kind of 800 years into the future, but you know, it may be sooner than 800 years.

Speaker 1: 24:54

I think we have that Partially. It's already there. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:56

And you know we kind of, you know we think about humans as kind of defined as something once and forever, but of course Homo sapiens or humans, we redefine kind of all the time.

Speaker 3: 25:10

Before we go to getting lost in screens and being quite disembodied, just to go back one stage, which is when we discovered locomotives and we started to make travel faster than our bodies could move and there was more thinking space because our bodies weren't employed in the strain of getting somewhere or carrying things or having to camp or all the exploring that you've done. Something I get from your writing is the quiet mind. How do you get to that is actually by employing all of your other faculties so that your mind isn't free to talk to itself, to have that conversation that goes on and on, and on and on. That we're all very used to.

Speaker 3: 25:53

We have endless meditation apps to try and find ways away from our minds.

Speaker 1: 25:58

But I think it's a state of flow. If you do that for 50 days, I think you were in a flow state in a way in a continuous flow state.

Speaker 1: 26:05

So I get that when I play music or I get that when I dance, for instance. You know, sometimes when I'm on the dance floor I just like I feel one with the universe and I think what you've done on these trips is like having that for 50 days, which I find fascinating, just like prolonging this flow state, because in the flow state and you're not mediating your surroundings through language, you're just existing in it, you're, you're there and you're taking it all in how sustainable is that?

Speaker 3: 26:32

how generous is that? How helpful to others is that?

Speaker 2: 26:35

you, tell, you, tell me, I think, um, just keep in mind that you know, this state you're talking about is something everyone can have agree, because it's easy, when we talk about it, to think that, like you know, this is kind of for explorers, or blah, blah blah, but it's for everyone.

Speaker 2: 26:53

And then again, most people, I think, are underestimating their own possibilities in life and also the possibilities to experience what you just said. This is something like just kind of waiting for us, like waiting for everyone to experience almost everyone, but what value it has. And you mentioned, natasha, the word uh, generous or generosity. I think that's one of the most beautiful words. You know.

Speaker 2: 27:15

What I have been doing is is certainly very egocentric, and I didn't walk to the north Pole or Clamp Everest or South Pole whatever, for any other reason than myself.

Speaker 2: 27:28

But then, when I returned back home, especially from the South Pole, I understood that it had meant a lot to other people, which was a really great surprise, because, of course, that also made it much more meaningful for me afterwards, having spent years to prepare. Meaningful for me afterwards, having spent years to prepare, and when I became aware that actually these kind of expeditions could have value for others than me, I also started to use energy on it, to write about it, to talk about it and inspire other people to not necessarily do the same as I'm doing, but follow their own path and find their own North Poles. So then, eventually it had some generosity and some meaning for others, but many explorers say they climb Everest because of the view or they walk to the North Pole because they want to be nice to children. Whatever, of course, you do, whatever you do for more than one reason only, and this can be one reason, but it's not the main reason.

Speaker 1: 28:29

Can I take us to the South pole, because you're mentioning it at first? It may be north pole flora, fauna, nothing do you see anything?

Speaker 2: 28:33

now you see, you know, you can see a polar bear, maybe a seal that pops up an open lead, maybe a polar fox. Okay, that's it that must be so exciting when you see nothing for the whole time and then all of a sudden Tell us, did you see a polar bear? We saw a polar bear.

Speaker 3: 28:49

Far.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Away 20 meters away. But my partner, berger, saw it and he shouted Hoi and I never heard him shout Hoi before. So I looked up and saw the bear and this was close to the north pole and we knew this far north is kind of nothing to eat but expedition members. Yeah, I was just about to say so. We were quite certain it was going to attack. So we grabbed our handguns, like you know, really quickly, and the bear walked a little bit back and forth. And Berger, he had this huge dream about having his photos published in National Geographic magazine, which was a huge thing in the old days. So he dropped his gun, grabbed his camera didn't have a film in the camera this was when you need a film put the film into the camera and got me to stand between himself and the bear posing with a gun, like come on, teddy, make my day.

Speaker 3: 29:53

And all this in minus 50. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 29:55

You know, this was later in the trip, so maybe it's minus 20 or 30. But all this happened super quick and then the bear turned towards us, started to dig his forefeet lower. It happened super quick and then the bear turned towards us, started to dig his forefeet lower, his head, and we knew she was going to charge. And the bear can run up to 60 kilometers an hour. So, like you know, maybe this ran in like 40 kilometers an hour. So it's you know from 20 meters, it's you know where you are. It's a very short time and we still had to wait until it was really close up, because we had only handguns and to save weight, we had short barrels, just two-inch barrels, and if you're going to hit it in the chest, which you have to to not only kill the bear but also to stop the bear in its stopping power. So we had to wait until it was really close and the V-Ball fired.

Speaker 2: 30:45

That was a close, you know it was like you know who's going to who for dinner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and how did that feel? Uh, before we shot it, you stay, at least. You know we stayed absolutely cool and rational, of course a little bit stupid taking a photo, but still we kind of had control, and when you shoot you're totally cool, but afterwards it's kind of two reactions, it's all the stress appears. You understand, yeah, I've been super scared. She was shaking a little bit and then also, you know, it feels it wasn't, but it felt unnecessary to have to kill a polar bear because we were in the polar bear's territory.

Speaker 3: 31:17

Its environment yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:19

And we were relieved and sad about the same thing.

Speaker 3: 31:22

Did you eat it?

Speaker 2: 31:24

Yeah, yeah. So this was going to be with no support. So Randall finds he was trying to do the same. At the same time this British explorer, great guy, and he said you should not eat. If you shoot an animal, you shouldn't eat it. It will be kind of support. So we didn't eat any polar bear meat before we got to the pole.

Speaker 1: 31:42

I see, okay, gotcha, yeah, but you took some meat.

Speaker 2: 31:46

Yeah, we took some steaks and Børge had learned how to skin, get the best fillets out of a sheep in the army that's what I was going to ask you.

Speaker 3: 31:54

Did you use the fur?

Speaker 2: 31:55

Yeah, no, we didn't use the fur because it's too heavy yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:05

But he insisted, he got the best steak out of the polar bear, but it didn't taste like it. So it's yeah, wow, okay. Now back to the South Pole Flora and fauna. Maybe, because we're on the topic, I assume it's very different, or yeah, you know it's.

Speaker 2: 32:16

The biggest difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic is that the Arctic, as I said, is an ocean circumnavigated by continents, while the Antarctic is a continent circumnavigated by oceans. So you actually walk on, kind of you walk on ice, but the ice is mostly resting on the continent. So in that sense it's much less complicated to get to the South Pole. But on the coastline you have great wildlife, but inland you don't see anything. At least I didn't see. I saw nothing for 50 days and nights and I didn't have a telephone or any way to communicate two ways communication with the world. So I was absolutely by myself.

Speaker 3: 32:56

Wow and tell us the difference in the experience between the solo voyage and the dual one with your friend. I think the biggest difference is that when you're alone by yourself in nature, the solo voyage and the dual one with your friend.

Speaker 2: 33:06

I think the biggest difference is that when you're alone by yourself in nature, the experience of nature gets much stronger. It gets really silent, both around you and in your mind. So I think for, as a personal experience, to kind of expand your mind, apropos Emily Dickinson's poem that was certainly what happened and that expedition a great lesson on the importance of silence. And silence is very much about getting to know yourself. It could be uncomfortable and that's why people mostly prefer noise, because noise is about other people, it's about other stuff than yourself. And when I think about noise, of course it's sounds, but also man-made lights, etc, etc. All this is noise. We prefer noise because that's the easiest thing in life to relate to, while silence, as I had to experience towards the South Pole because there was no other option, was deeply meaningful. It wasn't easy all the time, but it really had to face myself.

Speaker 3: 34:11

And something that you've spoken about is how we avoid the present. So we either live in the future or the past, and I can't remember which of your books, because I've read a few now, so they've become one canon. The experience of being on your own in the South Pole was the time when you've most inhabited the present.

Speaker 2: 34:33

It's a really beautiful feeling, which is, of course, difficult a little bit difficult in civilization but just to be present in your own life and not live in the future. As I said, not live in the past, not living through other people, not expecting too much going to happen, but just being present in in the moment, being present in your life. That experience, of course, got much, much stronger because it lasted for such a long time, but, but again, I think you can have the same experience, maybe less strong, almost anywhere. You just need to put your act together. So I think you can find an inner silence. This inner silence is there all the time, waiting for you to experience it. I think you can sit down at Piccadilly Circus and you can still find it in the silence.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Maybe it's a little bit more difficult, or it will be, but you can still find it Maybe it's easier to hop in and out of it than have a sustained experience like you.

Speaker 3: 35:37

Why do you think living in the present is painful?

Speaker 2: 35:40

I think silence can certainly be painful Not necessarily very painful, but a little bit painful to start with. We're born in a way that we're always thinking about the future or the past and if you're going to be present, you somehow have to disappear from those two desires and I think, as you said, you get into a kind of a flow or kind of trance or something less complicated, and suddenly you feel like you're part of eternity and you, as I mentioned earlier, become timeless Again. I think it's something everyone can experience.

Speaker 2: 36:14

But, you have to put yourself in a position to be able to experience it.

Speaker 1: 36:19

I really like what you're saying and I do think you say this quite often as well in some of our pods is we've clearly lost something as we build civilization right from, say, our nomadic past, because when you have less of that around you the distraction, the other people, the civilization and the focus on culture rather than nature you certainly have bandwidth for other things the appreciation of very little. It comes very much through and how you describe it when I got to the south pole.

Speaker 2: 36:49

The americans have built a base at the south pole. They didn't expect me because I didn't communicate with the outside world, so I just kind of walking and they saw me from the base. A few yankees came to greet me and the first guy said how do you do so? I said like a pig in shit. And again, natasha hadn't washed for those 50 days. But then they offered me to stay inside the base and I stick to my tent.

Speaker 2: 37:19

I believe, I did that every night because I needed to adjust. It took night because I needed to adjust and it took a few weeks actually to adjust. But what was surprising maybe is that after a few days towards the South Pole you stop missing anything. I hardly missed anything during those 50 days and nights. It was kind of a Norwegian dream ski all day, eat well in the evening and sleep at night. You miss skin contact Like you know that's something you're missing, but beyond that hardly anything.

Speaker 1: 37:50

Okay, and how does this feel when you come back? Do you see how you're falling back into the trap of missing or wanting things?

Speaker 2: 37:58

Yeah, because you know, the week after you come back your washing machine breaks down and you need to call a plumber and you need to pay him, and life goes on. But having said that, like you know, as I said in Poland by Tennyson, we are a part of all that we have met, and that's certainly true. So that experience, you know, never goes away. I mean, it gets weaker. But that's also the reason I could sit down and write a whole book about silence was because I had done that expedition. It's also because I had three teenage daughters afterwards and then my life was all about noise. They didn't know what silence was. With that experience and many other experiences and expeditions, I could say something about silence people hadn't read before.

Speaker 1: 38:43

I actually think that sound pollution has a very visceral impact on our neurophysiology. Yeah, and I noticed this myself. I remember I was in New York for two weeks and I came back on a red eye to Notting Hill and I got out of the tube and for the first time I heard birds and it was silent. And it was an epiphany where I realized, oh wow, I was constantly stressed while I was in New York for those two weeks actually and I didn't realize, but I realized how my body just calmed down when I heard the birds and you know, it was just like very quiet.

Speaker 2: 39:11

New York is a very noisy city, but also New York is. I love New York. Of course, new York is about making money and making money makes a lot of noise.

Speaker 1: 39:22

I like that let's go to the subterranean expedition that you had you explored, as we are in New York right now, on topic the sewers and the tunnels under New York, which is, I think, the subway tunnels, right, yeah, how well. This is a complete contrast to what you've done before. Maybe you want to talk to us a little bit about how it was different and how it was similar.

Speaker 2: 39:47

Yeah, I had this friend who told me he was a psychiatrist and went underground in New York to find mentally ill people on the Sundays, his day off, and I got deeply fascinated by that people actually living underground. I was kind of, you know, looking into different possibilities and eventually I saw the possibility of crossing the whole city, alpine style, with a backpack, a sleeping bag, a little mattress, and starting up north in 242nd Street, which is in Bronx, walk through the sewage of Harlem or Bronx, sorry, down to Harlem and then crisscrossing the city all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. So, and I suggest the idea for this urban explorer called Steve Duncan. So, and I suggest the idea for this urban explorer called Steve Duncan great guy, this was his life to to get in and out of manholes and climbing bridges. But he, neither Enron Nails had ever kind of done it alpine style, to kind of cross the whole city. Their idea was to climb a bridge, do something at night and then go to sleep.

Speaker 2: 40:45

But I wanted kind of as an expedition, so we did and others were joining and leaving, but Steve and I we did the whole expedition, five days sleeping on the ground, and you know, what you see is what New York will look if you turn it upside down. Also, you see so many things, but also, like you know, everything that happens above ground is somehow reflected below ground. Everything if you build a building, you see it underground and, of course, whatever people consume partly is also ending up underground. So it was very interesting but also kind of humorous, because it's. We tried to cross the sewage in Soho and it was a tunnel, and the green street going down to Canal Street is so narrow we had to crawl through the shit and then we just started laughing because it's just too wild you don't say so.

Speaker 3: 41:40

I mean this is the opposite of the of shitting quickly in an awful all noise all anti-antibacterial Of shitting quickly In a North Pole, all noise, all the time, with white, pure snow.

Speaker 2: 41:48

The antibacterial environment of the North Pole versus like just yeah, we didn't get sick actually, but it's for me it was first of all, it was just, you know, it was a funny trip.

Speaker 2: 42:00

It was a mean expedition. It was something no one had done before. But also at the time this was 2010, I think it was and the mother of my kids they kind of were not good friends anymore. So we both knew it was kind of falling apart the whole thing and I felt like shit and I just wanted to somewhat dig into the shit which I did. People say you can't walk away from your problems. But of course you can walk away from your problems.

Speaker 3: 42:27

Into bigger problems, into bigger problems.

Speaker 2: 42:30

But of course when I returned back home the problems were even bigger. But for a while I just walked away from my problems. I got a major break from all the noise at home and just had a great time. And sometimes a little bit dangerous, but the biggest danger is to be seen by the police because of course all this is illegal and there's so much police in New York so that was kind of of a major concern.

Speaker 3: 42:54

I know you said in passing that people often say without thinking, oh, when you tell them about your expedition, I wish I could go to the north, I wish I had the courage to go to the south, or I wish I could climb everest. I did some of my life stream and how many people have said I wish I could walk yeah, it's, it's.

Speaker 2: 43:13

I remember first time I heard it was we sailed across the atlantic in 1984. We came to barbados almost the first person I met we came sailing from Cape Verde in West Africa. The first person said oh, I've always been dreaming about doing the same as you have been doing, and that kind of comment has followed me ever since. But I kind of, you know, feel respect for it because there's so many good excuses or explanations for it not choosing the most difficult path, but also a little bit sad because you know these people are 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years old and maybe start to understand that they kind of missed out on at least this chance to have a really rich life.

Speaker 3: 43:59

Well, maybe they're just relieved that now they don't have to do it.

Speaker 2: 44:04

Also maybe relieved, I agree, but it's. I can't remember this old rabbi who was saying if not now, when I think that's important, you should not postpone all these kind of things. You have to take action and I think that's also some of the beauties being an explorer At least my experience is that, also as an entrepreneur. First I got the idea and then I decided to do it, and afterwards I think about how it can be done and you know preparations, challenges, difficulties etc. Because you know it's. It's if you first get the idea and then think about all the difficulties, you never do anything, I'll do anything.

Speaker 1: 44:43

Yeah, I'd love to talk about the hardship part that you just described, because we had this conversation before the mics went on. It feels like we're in a time where a lot of people are trying to avoid hardship and friction, as a matter of fact, so much so that you know they're trying to cancel other people when they say things that they don't like. Other people, when they say things that they don't like, you know, try to point fingers at other people just so that they don't have to change or they don't have to accept other things that people say. Now I don't know if that's a very prevalent thing in society. Certainly it seems like it's. There's a lot of it around. How do we change people's minds in this regard? What? What is the richness that they're missing out on?

Speaker 2: 45:24

you know they're missing out on life and you, they're missing out on life and you know they're just narrowing in their own visions, their own horizons and, like you know, somehow you're born with a 360 degrees horizon and you're kind of, you know, taking this huge fight to just narrow in your horizon and you've tried to avoid the fact that life is brutal. Johnny Cash was singing life is hard and the world is rough. If a man got to make it, it got to be tough. Yeah, so I think you know the missing out on, you know the most important life.

Speaker 3: 45:52

I know you've said in the past that you set out to make your life more difficult than it might otherwise be, presumably because there's a ratio between difficulty and interestingness for you, and are you saying that the less difficult people try to make their lives, in fact, the less interesting the outcome is likely to be?

Speaker 2: 46:11

Yeah, I think that's something I strongly believe, but obviously also because I wasn't born in Sudan, I was born in Norway and somehow my personal philosophy or idea of a good life is that you wake up in the morning and you're making all the choices throughout the day and you have to choose between the easiest option, a bit more difficult option and the most difficult option to you know, to the different, different matters, and in my experience you should not all the time, but usually you should go for the most difficult options during the day. You should get up early in the day, you should make your life more challenging to almost every day, but of course I mean this is not a religion, so sometimes you can get pissed whatever you want and sleep all day, but it's in general in life. I think you should actively make it more difficult than it has to be.

Speaker 3: 47:02

But is that because, as humans and as a species, we've learned to cultivate things and make our life easier, employ machines and whatever we call civilization, so things have become too easy. So we start to self-sabotage in some way or try to find difficulties or mental blocks and landscapes where we find problems, because actually we've stamped out all the threats from nature that we might otherwise be encountering. Because doesn't finding the path of least resistance? Isn't that what the rest of nature does? It flows in the easiest way. So why wouldn't we, if we were in tune with nature, try to do the same?

Speaker 2: 47:42

You know, we can compare ourselves to a river, which necessarily finds the easiest way through the terrain. But I think we should be more ambitious than that and also, like you, know what is the easiest? Nature, etc. It's, you know it's not that simple to answer either. But for humans, I think you know the way we're born, with all the talents we have and all the time we have on earth as living beings.

Speaker 2: 48:07

It is a little fight to make it meaningful and in my experience, people are wasting their lives on doing almost meaningless things, and I don't think it's necessarily anything wrong with it, but to me it's a mistake, because you have this one huge possibility to live a great life, a rich life, a life with many highlights, and then you choose not to. And I think you know this is uh. Of course it's about making life a little bit more difficult. It's about being more in touch with nature. It's about getting up in the morning. It it's about reading, it's about listening. Of course it's about participating.

Speaker 2: 48:52

It's about generosity it was mentioned earlier on. It's about being generous and it's certainly about trying to make the world a little bit better place to be. And when I used to date different girls, if they said they thought that it's impossible to change the world for the better. It was always a turnoff Because, of course's impossible to change the world for the better it was. It was always a turnoff because, of course, everyone can change the world for the better. And you know, the cliche is, even a mouse can eat an elephant if it takes small portions I.

Speaker 1: 49:20

I think that living life on hard mode is what you're saying. That's what what I usually call it. Even just living a principled life where you have values that you stick to, even if they are uncomfortable to represent in some situations, right is, in a way, playing life on hard mode. I also find, for instance, today in the social media game, everybody is adopting the principle of being extreme because that's what the algorithms you know put out there right and that's the easy way. Like because that's what the algorithms you know put out there right and that's the easy way. Like, that's the easy way.

Speaker 1: 49:52

It's actually really hard to be exceptional, because the exceptional stuff gets shared as well, but it's really hard to be exceptional. It's super easy to be extreme. That's just what everybody does. So I think what you say resonates beyond just seeking out nature for me, but it actually has something to do with the value system and principle that you stick with because you believe it's worthy, and it creates friction, of course, but going back to what you said earlier as well, it's about the differences when you're changing from a state where your arm is hurting for weeks and then, all of a sudden, your arm is great to really recognize. Oh wow, now I have my full range of motion again. I never recognized that this range of motion was so valuable to me until it was gone. So you know depriving yourself of things on these journeys, and then you know going into these different states, really kind of not to do has many sides, but it's uh, you know, just one.

Speaker 2: 50:45

One example is that if you live your life on kind of more or less the same level every day, my experience is that then you will end up feeling life is very short. And in one way you're correct. Because life is short, because you hardly experience anything interesting and it's kind of hardly any changes. Everything is plus minus, is almost on the same level. It changes. Everything plus minus is almost on the same level and of course, you know then, one year passed by, 10 years passed by 50 years, passed by 70 years old, and you think that all these days and weeks and years have passed by.

Speaker 2: 51:19

Was that really my life? Yeah, but if you reconnect to nature, if you're interested in other people, if you you read great books, see good movies, listen to music you don't understand, but try to grasp it your life gets more interesting and it feels longer. It's just like if you go to Tokyo for two days, you feel you have been away for two weeks because it's so different and in that sense life is long. But we shouldn't go to away for two weeks because it's so different. So, and in that sense, like you know, life is long.

Speaker 3: 51:50

But we shouldn't go to Tokyo for two days.

Speaker 2: 51:53

We should all go to Tokyo for two days.

Speaker 3: 51:54

No, we shouldn't. Because, coming back to climate change for our last topic, talk to us about what you feel about that, what you're doing about it. Your first experiences of the North Pole, when perhaps that was less of a known threat, what was happening and the melting, and where we are today.

Speaker 2: 52:13

I think all polar explorers going up north have had the same experience it's getting warmer and it's getting less ice.

Speaker 2: 52:22

That in itself is interesting but of course it's still anecdotal.

Speaker 2: 52:27

But when you look into the science it's confirmed that it's not only getting warmer but it's getting much warmer up north than it does in the rest of the world.

Speaker 2: 52:36

They say it's about two or three times warmer. It has heated up two or three times more in the Arctic than the rest of the world and that is really dramatic because the Arctic traditionally has been covered by white ice and white snow. All the heat is reflected up into the air but now, when it's partly open water, it's all the heat from the sun is getting into the water, remains there, heats up the water and that again makes you know, less ice and the air is heating up. So the consequences for the rest of the world is not easy to grasp. I don't know, but it certainly will be traumatic, it will be dramatic. I was up there last time in sept September last year and you kind of get the feeling that when I looked out onto the polar ocean and saw just water all the way towards the North Pole and hardly any ice, I just get the feeling that the ice doesn't need us, but we certainly need the ice.

Speaker 3: 53:45

And is that a first to see that amount of water in the last 2,700,000 years? Yeah, I think it's like actually it's.

Speaker 2: 53:53

the Arctic has been covered by ice more or less constantly for 2.7 million years. So, and then three and a half million years it was probably not much ice, still some ice, but what the consequences will be impossible to say. It will be dramatic for sure. That's one of the reasons I want to write about the North Pole, because I think it's like you know, it's the whole history from prehistoric times until today is very much all a story about the world, and it's a story about where we came from and what's going on today and not to mention what may happen in the future.

Speaker 1: 54:34

This was an exploration of all different parts, of the top of the world to the bottom of the world underneath New York. We went in various different directions. Thanks so much for being the tour guide, erling.

Speaker 3: 54:45

Thank you for inviting. I've had the Emily Dickinson experience of going to the North and the South Pole with you, thank you. Thanks so much.